The subject matter disclosed herein relates to a system for molding products from a plastic material, such as an injection molding system and in particular to a molding system that allows for the automatic printing of labels associated with the molded part.
Injection molding systems, are often used to fabricate products and components, such as vehicle seats or other vehicle interior components for example. These products are often marked with an adhesive backed label. These labels may include specific product information such as a bar code for example, or may be serialized to allow traceability and lot control. These systems use a mold that is fabricated to form the product in the desired shape. The molds may be interchanged to allow the same system to fabricate different products. It should be appreciated that a modern large manufacturing facility may have many such molding systems where the molds may be used.
It may be desirable to use the same mold in different molding systems to increase the efficiencies of operation and avoid bottlenecks in the manufacturing of products. Since a particular mold may be used in a variety of different molding systems within a facility or even in different facilities, it may be difficult to ensure that the proper labels are associated with the corresponding products when the molds are made. Mislabeling of the product may result in a number of issues, including: having to scrap products, the wrong components being sent to further subsequent manufacturing processes, the wrong parts being shipped to customers, incorrect inventory status and reduced ability for production lot control. It should be appreciated that proper association of the label to the molded product is desired
Accordingly, while existing product molding systems are suitable for their intended purposes the need for improvement remains, particularly in providing a molding system that is automatically associates the correct label with the molded product.